4,000 more U.S. troops headed to Afghanistan

The Pen­tagon will send al­most 4,000 ad­di­tional Amer­i­can forces to Afghanistan, a Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial said Thurs­day, hop­ing to break a stale­mate in a war that has now passed to a third U.S. com­man­der in chief. The de­ploy­ment will be the largest of Amer­i­can man­power un­der Don­ald Trump’s young pres­i­dency.

The de­ci­sion by De­fense Sec­re­tary Jim Mat­tis could be an­nounced as early as next week, the of­fi­cial said. It fol­lows Mr. Trump’s move to give Mr. Mat­tis the au­thor­ity to set troop lev­els needed to ad­dress threats.

The bulk of the ad­di­tional troops will train and ad­vise Afghan forces, ac­cord­ing to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity. A smaller num­ber would be as­signed to coun­tert­er­ror op­er­a­tions against the Tal­iban and IS, the of­fi­cial said.